FlexTrade Strikes VWAP Deal with NYSE Technologies

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Called FlexEdge, the service updates full day volume calculations every minute for traders using volume-weighted average price (VWAP) algorithms and other strategies. Traders using these algos need to be able to predict the distribution of volume throughout the day in order to achieve prices as close to final VWAP as possible, according to FlexTrade executive Max Palmer. FlexEdge continually updates its predictions using the current day's data.

"Users can feed a dynamically changing VWAP curve into their VWAP algorithms allowing them to reduce the variance of their execution with respect to actual market VWAP that day," explained Palmer. FlexTrade has offered the technology to its own clients for many years.

The deal with NYSE Technologies, a unit of exchange operator NYSE Euronext, is FlexTrade's first effort at distributing through third parties. NYSE Technologies will offer FlexEdge through Superfeed, a low latency, market data vendor feed, according to Todd Watkins, an executive in NYSE Technologies' market data group. FlexTrade's content will be published through OpenMAMA middleware, an "open source" technology originally developed by NYSE Technologies.